


a temporary fix

by clownguts (quagmires)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: F/M, Phone Sex, a little bit of crying, fix-it AU, reference to stan's OCD if you squint hard enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:16:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29821359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quagmires/pseuds/clownguts
Summary: It's 11pm when Patty's phone rings.
Relationships: Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	a temporary fix

It’s 11pm when Patty’s phone rings.

Instantly, she knows it’s Stanley. She hasn’t got a special ringtone for him or anything, because she has no idea how to do that. It’s just a feeling she gets. Maybe he could feel, all the way up in Maine, how much she misses him. They haven’t been separated by this much distance in years — perhaps not ever since they’d met, because they’ve always been a package deal. Maybe, like her, he’s flopped down into bed to find the emptiness on the other side unsettling. She’d like to think that’s how she knows it’s him on the other end, but in reality it’s probably just that nobody else has any business calling her this late.

She was just starting to doze off, too. It takes a moment for her to get her bearings and pull her phone off the nightstand. She squints bleary-eyed at the screen, and sure enough, her husband’s name and picture are lit up on the phone. Immediately, all her drowsiness vanishes and she slides the little green button across the screen, and holds the phone up to her ear.

“Stanley!” she coos.

The line on the other end crackles a bit — Stan had said the reception up there might be shit. Sure, they weren’t far out of Bangor, but from the way he’d described it, Derry may as well be three candle-lit buildings and a horse drawn wagon.

“Babylove,” he says back, then: “Did I wake you? Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Patty insists, rubbing the last of the sleep from her eyes, “I’d rather talk to you. How’s Derry?”

Apart from the static, there’s total silence on the other end. Patty immediately regrets asking; the decision to go back to his hometown hadn’t been an easy one for Stanley. He was a total wreck leading up to his flight and for the life of him he just couldn’t explain why. The minute he’d hung up the call from one of his childhood friends, he’d grabbed onto Patricia and bawled for hours. No amount of gentle reassurance had calmed him. And yet when he tried to explain why he had to go back and why it terrified him so much, he’d been at a total loss for words.

Patty thinks it has something to do with his nightmares: the ones he wakes up thrashing and screaming from, but forgets the minute his eyes open. Maybe, further still, it’s linked to the lack of insight he has about his childhood. In college, she’d asked him where he grew up, and his response had been “Oh...somewhere up in New England, I think...” In the twenty-odd years since, any knowledge related to his upbringing has remained vague.

She thinks her husband suffered some terrible trauma growing up, something he had repressed to the point that all his formative years just didn’t exist, and that the call from this man named Mike had brought it all rushing back. So she feels awfully insensitive asking him how it is to be back there, where all the memories are.

“Sorry, you don’t have to—“

“It’s fine,” Stan replies evenly, “It’s...weird seeing everyone again. I don’t know how I forgot them all...”

It’s always been an elephant in the room, and even though he’s looking it right in the eye now, Patty can’t quite understand how her beloved Stanley is back to remaining calm and ignorant.

She wants to say something like, “You forgot them because otherwise you’d remember all the bad things that happened to all of you, and it’d destroy you.” But that just seems too harsh. So instead she offers up a far less accosting, “I wish I was there with you.”

“So do I,” Stanley admits. In the background, Patricia can hear the thumping of footsteps against a thin carpet, and she can just tell that her husband is pacing nervously.

“It’s, uh...it’s much quieter up here than it is in Atlanta,” he continues, “I think you’d like it. And I think you’d like the others — especially Bevvie. She was always sore about being the only girl in our group, but she saw your picture on my phone and didn’t stop gushing all through dinner about how cute we look. And she got to asking me all these questions, like how we met and when we were married and I think secretly she was surprised the reason we got married so soon wasn’t because you were—”

“Stanley.”

He’s rambling again, he does that when he’s anxious. Sometimes it’s good for him; he’ll go on about nothing in particular and eventually wind up talking himself through his problem at hand. But tonight it doesn’t seem like his monologue will be very beneficial. If anything, it’s just going to land him someplace that hurts, and Patty would like him to stop before he gets there.

Thankfully, he does stop. Even the sound of his pacing stops. “Oh— huh?”

There’s a lot Patty wants to say to him. Like how worried she is about him, how she knows he’s a grown man who can take care of himself but that doesn’t stop her from fretting about not being there with him.

“I miss you,” is what she says instead. And it’s so, so heartfelt that she thinks she might cry just from saying those three short words.

On the other end of the line, feeling so close yet so far away all at once, she can almost feel Stan’s posture deflate and his expression soften. “I miss you too, babylove,” he croons to her. Patty can hear the creaking of springs as he sits down on his bed. “I wish you were here, but it’d probably be boring for you.”

Patty hums a small agreement. She would need to give Stanley his space with his childhood friends, and that’d leave her doing...what, exactly? Probably very little.

Plus, Stan had been the one to insist she stay home. He hadn’t said why, beyond that this was something he has to do alone, whatever that means. But he didn’t need to say much for Patty to get the feeling that he was trying to protect her from Derry. Like he was afraid that even after all these years, even as a grown adult, she would be in danger just by coming along.

She isn’t sure if he expects whatever monster that hurt him and his friends to still be around thirty years after the fact, but it sure sounded like he did.

“Besides,” Stan continues with a wistful little sigh, “If you were here, I’d be too distracted to get anything done.”

Patty giggles softly. She can hear his wry smirk through the phone. “Is that really all you’d be thinking about, Stanley?”

She hears his grin grow. “That’s all I ever think about.”

“You’re such a boy,” Patty teases, but she knows she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. She can’t remember the last time they went this long without at least getting a little handsy, and it’d only been a few days since Stan had left for Maine.

They both share a laugh through the phone — the springs on the other end creak a little more as Stanley lays back. When he finally speaks again, there’s a notable shift in the tone of his voice. One that makes goosebumps raise on Patty’s arms.

“So, what’re you wearing, babylove?” he purrs. A shiver goes up Patty’s spine; she laughs nervously.

“Nothing very sexy, sorry,” she snorts, “Just one of your shirts.”

“ _Just_ one of my shirts?”

“Panties too, but y’know. Semantics.” She waves her free hand in the air dismissively, momentarily forgetting he can’t see her. Laying back against the pillows, she takes a deep breath and sighs. “But the shirt is what’s important. It smells like you...”

Stanley makes a quiet noise, almost like a whine. “I wish I could be there with you...” he says for the nth time.

Now Patty smirks, because she’s gotten certain thoughts in her head as well and she just can’t help but idly rub her thighs together under the blankets. “Oh yeah? What would you be doing if you were here with me?”

“Does it even need saying?” Stan asks wistfully, before realizing the point of this whole exercise is to say it anyway.

“Well for starters, I’d get you out of that shirt,” he continues in a low voice, “I want to put my hands all over you and it’d only get in the way.”

Patty closes her eyes and hums softly at the thought. The shirt she wears only vaguely smells of his aftershave; she thinks about rolling over to face him, burying her nose against the crook of his neck and breathing him in.

Then she thinks about how he’d indulge her for a moment before rolling her back to face the other way, because he loves to tease her from behind.

Finally she groans and reaches under the blankets to shuck off her panties. Vaguely she can hear the clinking of a belt buckle coming undone and the unzipping of jeans.

“You are so horny,” she teases.

“Look who’s talking,” he retorts. He sounds a bit antsy now; Patty knows that tone all too well. “Wh...uh. What are you gonna do?”

He’s cute, Patty thinks. So, so cute in the way he’s still a little shy. Even after more than two decades, he’s cautious and gentle until she tells him not to be.

“Me?” She grins, swirling her index finger around her bellybutton idly. “I’m going to fuck myself to the sound of your voice as you do the exact same thing.”

Stanley whimpers through the phone, his breathing already a little labored. He’s so easy to rile up, Patty thinks fondly. Then again, so is she. That’s why she’s already got her panties off and her hand between her legs just two minutes into the call. It isn’t like phone sex is even something they regularly have, or like she planned to do anything remotely sexual tonight. Yet here they are.

“Patty,” Stan sighs, and she knows just by the hitch in his voice that he’s touching himself, palming at his member through his boxer briefs. She can picture him perfectly: leaned back against the wall or headboard, belt and trousers open just enough to give him access to the bulge in the front of his underwear. His head’s tilted back, exposing his throat and if Patty were there she’d have covered it in hickeys by now.

She wants to pace herself, maybe wants to tease herself a bit. But when her hand dips down between her thighs and finds herself to be wet and sensitive, all thoughts of going slow fly right out the window. She squeezes her eyes shut and whines softly as she imagines they’re his fingers instead; she rolls onto her side and imagines him, bare chest against her back, mouth leaving little lovebites on the nape of her neck, as his hand trips clumsily down her belly until it finds her center. He’s always so eager to explore her, always like it was the first time all over again.

Patty conjures up in her mind how he’d slide two fingers down her slit as she mimics the action, drags them through the slick, and gasps shakily against her pillow. She rolls her hips a little and tries to pretend he’s right there next to her, and that the movement of her hips grinds back against the growing erection in his shorts.

At the same time, on the other end of the phone call, Stanley groans under his breath. The way it perfectly fits the timing of the scenario in her head sends a spark of excitement down into the pit of her belly.

“Don’t stop talking, Stanley...” she pleads. She’s idly teasing her fingertips around her entrance while the ball of her thumb presses up against her clit. It’s barely enough friction. But she wants to wait to hear her husband’s voice before doing anymore, just to further her own little fantasy that he’s here with her and her fingers aren’t her own.

Stan stammers a little at first. He’s never been too good at dirty talk, but the situation kind of calls for it. So, she offers some extra encouragement: “What’re you thinking about, love?”

It gives her husband the nudge of confidence he needs; after a little more tumbling over his own tongue, he finally finds the words he needs. “You,” he starts with a low moan, almost breathless, “I’m thinking about...about how you’d feel on my lap. You’d be...grinding down on me. Biting my neck. And refusing to let me undress completely yet because you just love to tease me.”

The way his voice is just a little strained makes Patty feel like her fingertips suddenly possess an electric touch, mostly because it’s making her think of how his cock must be straining against the fabric of his briefs right now. It’s a hell of a leap, making such a connection, but she doesn’t care. She’s too busy thinking about how, if she were there with him, she would be teasing him. Grinding down on his erection through the cotton of their underwear and driving them both wild, before sinking down onto her knees next to the bed and ever so gently mouthing over the fabric...

Her body gives a little shudder at the thought. She vaguely registers Stan gasping out another soft sound — maybe he’s had the exact same thought (she knows just how much he loves the sight of her on her knees for him), or maybe he’s imagining an entirely different scenario. Because Patty has more than a few ways of getting him off.

But right now, she’s focused on getting them both off, or at least herself. She figures Stanley won’t have too much trouble doing the same.

There’s a pause, where he’s trying to make sure he doesn’t get too loud, before he continues to set the scene of his little fantasy:

He wants his hands all over her, but she knows they’d always return to her waist or thighs. Meanwhile his mouth would get to work on her chest. She doesn’t have much in the way of breasts but he’s never complained; he’s always been too busy suckling a path of bright red marks over them or rolling a hardened nipple between his teeth.

He wants to pull her down against him, buck his hips up to meet hers, return the favor for all the teasing she’s done so far. Stan knows she likes it when he moves against her like that, even if he’s not actively fucking her. It just drives her wild — something about the carnal nature of it all, the reminder that he wants her just as badly as she wants him.

(Patty presses up against her hand unthinkingly, rolling the heel of it against her clit and letting out the tiniest cry as it lights her whole body on fire.)

She knows, she knows Stanley would repeat the motion as many times as he could and each time, it’d make her more and more desperate for him. So rarely does he turn the teasing back around onto her but when he does, her willpower crumbles into dust. The mere thought of him grinding against her, his member hot and hard beneath the fabric and just too too far away for her liking, makes her feel like her head is spinning.

But Stan knows he can’t hold out forever, even when he’s just talking through the scenario. He’d eventually roll the both of them to the side until he’s got her pressed down against the mattress. It’d only take a moment to remove her panties, then his own briefs, but it’d feel like an eternity. Just like how right now feels like an eternity — just how waiting for him to come home to Georgia feels like an eternity.

“Angel...” He sounds a little desperate when he speaks now, a feeling that Patty can empathize with. Suddenly their lack of an otherworldly ability to teleport to one another has become incredibly inconvenient. “You know I love to leave you begging, but right now all I want is to fuck you.”

All in one instant, Patty feels her heart melt and her stomach twist. She wants him here — to fuck her, yes, but for all the stuff that comes afterwards as well. The soft kisses and shoulder rubs and delicate moments shared between them before they fall asleep. They can’t have that when he’s over a thousand miles away. It’s enough to make her want to cry, but Stan is still on the other end of the line. He’s whimpering quietly, barely restraining a moan as he no doubt palms himself through his briefs and waits for permission to remove them.

He wants her. So badly. She isn’t going to ruin that for him by crying about something that’s only temporary. Isn’t going to ruin it for either of them, because she wants him too.

“Please, Stanley...” Patty finally whispers, barely audible, down into the phone. She rubs her thighs together with her hand still trapped between, trying to tide herself over with the mild friction. “I want you. So badly. You have no idea.” She’s almost keening now, gasping as she allows herself to rock against her hand. “Please please please do this with me.”

(Arguably, Stan does have some idea, not the least because they’re like two sides of the same coin. They’re always in tandem.)

He takes this as permission enough. Through the phone, Patty hears the slight snap of elastic as he struggles to shimmy his underwear down one-handed. Springs squeak as he adjusts himself into a more comfortable position. They’re both learning just how hard it is to seamlessly bring a phone into the mix.

He’s breathing heavily, and she can see it as clearly in her head as if he were right in front of her: he has his free hand wrapped around the base of his cock, wanting to stroke himself to relieve that pressure but not wanting to race ahead of her. So he’s settled for just moving his hand a little, which always gets him even more desperate. Patty smirks at herself.

He never learns. Or maybe he’s just learned what I enjoy seeing the most.

Patricia makes the first move, as usual. She rolls down against her hand and gasps shakily, pressing one finger and then a second inside herself. It’s easy, when she’s this wet. Her movements press her clit against the heel of her hand again. Not perfectly, but she’s not looking for something fast and easy tonight. She closes her eyes and pretends they’re Stanley’s fingers, and moves down onto them eagerly.

There’s a short lull on the other end, but the static is quickly interrupted by Stan coming out of an awe-struck trance and moaning shakily. He’s panting into the phone, whimpering in such a way that Patty can only assume he’s taken her cue and is now pumping his fist around his length. The knowledge sends a jolt of electricity straight between her legs, the resounding high-pitched gasp is something she’s sure her husband enjoyed hearing.

“B...Baby...” he coos softly, breathlessly, “Did you...did you want me to keep talking?”

Patty giggles. Such a charming man, her Stanley. If a little awkward. “No, it’s okay, darling,” she tells him. She wishes she could run her fingers through his hair, let him know he’d done a good job for her. “Just focus on you, now...”

Stan laughs weakly. “I can’t focus on anything that isn’t you right now.”

“You know what I mean. Just close your eyes, baby. Pretend I’m right there with you.”

There’s a moment of quiet, where perhaps he’s trying to really imagine that scenario. It doesn’t last long; after a few short seconds, he exhales shakily into the receiver of his phone. Patty can practically hear him biting down on his lip to keep from being too loud. She hears the shifting of fabric on fabric, realizes with another pleasant jolt that he hasn’t bothered to take anything off properly. He’s just laying there in whatever clothes he’d worn for the day, pants undone and haphazardly pulled down, jerking himself off to the sound of her voice. It’s flattering, to know that there isn’t a single part of her that doesn’t drive him crazy.

Patty listens, a little awestruck, as her husband seems to fall into a rhythm. Seems to have fallen into the fantasy that it’s her touching him. His confidence and volume both seem to grow, although the latter is something he’s still clearly trying to keep a lid on. It’s always been a struggle for Stan to be quiet. He gets lost in his own little world where it’s just the two of them, or just him, and quickly becomes a writhing mess of gasps and cries and nonsense half-sentences. Only now he’s sharing thin walls with his childhood friends. Patty doesn’t envy him for that.

She absolves herself with the knowledge that he can be as loud as he likes when he comes home to her.

She can tell, with surprising clarity, the exact moment he rubs his thumb over the tip of his cock. (Maybe to try stop himself from leaking all over the sheets, she thinks with a hot flush). He gives a small little ’Mh!’ and the bed squeaks a little as he bucks up into his hand. The same reaction he gives when she does the exact same thing.

“Baby,” he whines shakily, “Honey, darling, turtle-dove...”

“I’m here,” she tells him, letting out a deep breath through her nose. Her own rhythm is faltering some, those powerful surges of heat becoming fewer and further in between because of it. But the way he whimpers out for her brings it back in a newer, bigger wave: Patty’s hips twitch, her hand slipping against herself, and she gives a small but sharp little cry into the phone. A familiar, burning heat rises up from the pit of her stomach, a slow drip which soon becomes a rapid increase. Patty curls her toes into the sheets. At this point she couldn’t keep herself from panting and keening into the phone if she tried. That wave of electricity is just surging higher and higher, and she’s waiting for it to crash but can’t help but feel like she’s going to burst before that happens.

“Ohh...” Stan gasps, “I can’t...Babylove. Patty, I— I’m...”

Her own breath feels like fire in her throat. “I know. I know.” She squirms beneath the covers, all of a sudden far too hot with them on top of her but far too close to her goal to consider throwing them off. “Shit, I-I...”

The words die in her throat and quickly become a high, breathy whine. She shuts her eyes tight, a shiver running through her whole body to combat the overwhelming heat. Each gasp for air has voice behind it, all the air sucked out of her lungs. She curls in on herself, draws her knees halfway up to her chest, and rocks desperately against her hand to chase this feeling as long as possible. Her fingers curl involuntarily; she tenses around them. The whole world has drowned out, faded right to the very edges, but the sound of Stanley on the other end of that phone is still clear as day.

He’s almost as high-pitched in his own sounds of joy as she is in hers. She keeps her eyes squeezed shut and pictures him trembling, desperate. Usually one hand will fly up to hide his face, to cover it, but right now both of them are indisposed. She thinks of how his eyes and nose must be scrunched up, mouth alternating between biting into his bottom lip and going completely slack. Stan doesn’t think the faces he makes in bed are very attractive, but just picturing his face alone has her feeling like she could come all over again.

And then, so quickly after her, he follows: he inhales sharply, going almost entirely silent for a second, before exhaling on a long, low moan. Patricia’s high is already tumbling back down, but she still gives a soft hum of appreciation as she imagines how he’s spilled himself across his stomach. She thinks of leaning down to follow the trail up with her tongue, thinks of him shivering beneath her mouth before she crawls back up to kiss him.

God, she just wants to kiss him so badly! The pain of not being able to is almost physical. Almost unbearable. She nearly debates booking the first flight out of Atlanta to Bangor. Just for that kiss.

“Well shit...” she finally breathes. There’s silence between them, for only a moment. Then she laughs. Stan laughs with her. They’re both breathless and sweaty and grinning like fools — they don’t have to see one another to know that.

Patty huffs as she pulls her fingers from herself, stretches back out from the fetal position she’d crammed herself into.

“I, uh...” Stan clears his throat a bit, and here comes the part she loves. The part after sex, where he instantly goes back to being the shy boy she met in college. “I made a bit of a mess.”

She laughs again, and doesn’t feel bad for doing so, because he’s giggling nervously with her. “Hm, poor baby,” she teases, “Don’t worry...I did too, so I can’t really talk.”

Her thighs and fingers are sticky. Maybe not bad enough to need to change the sheets, but enough that she’ll need to trudge to the bathroom and wash herself off. Or else she’ll be uncomfortable all night.

But there’s no rush to clean up, there hardly ever is. Her first priority right now is letting their phone call draw to a natural close.

“I miss you,” Patty says again. Her voice is heavier now. Sleepier. She’s still breathing heavily, heart still racing a little.

Stanley makes a small, sad noise, caught between a sigh and a groan. “God...I miss you too, turtle-dove.”

She smiles sadly, and sniffles against the back of her hand.

“Are you crying?”

“No,” she says, although tears are beginning to well up as she speaks, “Are you?”

There’s a brief, guilty pause.

“A...A little.”

Tired a second ago, Patty now sits forward in bed with newfound energy. She cradles the phone against her ear and pouts. “Aw, honey,” she sighs, “What can I do?”

Through the phone, she can hear him shake his head. “No, it’s fine,” he laughs weakly. He’s sniffling a little as well. “I just need to...to stop being stupid and clean up so I can go to bed.”

“You aren’t stupid, Stanley,” she consoles him. To this, he hums in his very specific ‘I disagree with you’ tone.

“I’m a little stupid.”

Patty rolls her eyes and smiles softly.

“You’re a little stupid,” she agrees, “But not for this. Not for missing me.”

The empty static between them has grown somber. Melancholic. Bittersweet. She can see his tired smile clear as day, feel his curls against her fingers as she brushes them out of his eyes. Against her cheek, there’s a phantom prickling sensation where she’d so often nuzzle her face against his despite the stubble on his jaw.

She feels all this, and yet he isn’t here.

Eventually they agree to wash up together. She puts him on speaker, lets his voice fill the room even if the quality is less than stellar. Hearing him describe his little room to her is soothing, and as she carries the phone and his presence into the bathroom, it bounces off the tiles and echoes all around her. It feels, for a moment, like he could be standing right beside her. But she won’t even entertain the thought, at the risk of properly crying.

“It’s not a five star hotel, or anything,” he chatters away. In the background, clothes rustle and a faucet turns on. There’s a little bit of feedback from the noises on her end. “But it’s nice. There are paintings from an old local artist on all the walls, and there are little carvings and pictures of turtles everywhere for some reason, and the entryway is...”

He talks, and Patty listens. She runs the tap until the water is warm, and wets the cloth to wipe herself down with. Everything is still sensitive, but no longer in the delicious and exciting way. Now the fabric of the cloth may as well be sandpaper.

After, she washes her hands thoroughly (a good yet bad habit she’d picked up from him over the years) and swaps her panties for a pair of his boxers. He won’t mind. Then she crawls back into bed.

“It sounds beautiful, baby,” she tells him around a yawn, “You’ll have to send me photos.”

“It’s not that interesting,” he says, “But okay. I’ll take photos.”

The springs of his bed creak again as he lays down, after finally changing into his pajamas. They’re both warm and comfortable and suitably tired enough to sleep. All that’s missing is the other person.

“I should let you sleep,” he says, a little regretfully.

“Mm, yes please. I’m tired,” she admits with a soft laugh, “You should too. The sooner you sleep, the sooner another day comes, the sooner you can come home.”

She hears him smiling through the phone, as she reminds him that this is all temporary. Before the week is out, he’ll be on a flight back to Atlanta — back to her. Back to sleeping in the same bed, back to kissing her every morning and night, back to what he knows his life is supposed to be. Only now he’ll be a bunch of friends, a few scars and a whole lifetime’s worth of memories heavier.

“Okay,” he finally agrees, “You sleep well, I’ll text you in the morning. I love you.”

“Goodnight...I love you too.”

Their call ends unceremoniously, as their calls often do. Only this time, Patty hasn’t even put her phone back on the nightstand before it buzzes, and Stanley’s name pops up again.

_‘You sound sexy over the phone.’_ his text reads. Patty doesn’t know whether to laugh or roll her eyes — so she does both.

_‘Funny...you sound the same to me.’_

_‘Does this mean you think I always sound sexy??’_

_‘Goodnight, Stanley.’_

**Author's Note:**

> please don't look at me


End file.
